Republicans scramble for the center on immigration

LITTLETON, Colo. 
It was little surprise when freshman Republican Rep. Mike Coffman in 2010 voted against a bill to grant citizenship to some young illegal immigrants. After all, the Marine Corps veteran had just won the seat in Congress formerly held by firebrand Rep. Tom Tancredo, who had pushed the GOP to take a harsher stance against illegal immigration.

The bill, known as the DREAM Act, died in the Senate.

Now Coffman has changed course. He has introduced legislation to let unauthorized immigrants brought into the country as children earn citizenship if they serve in the military. And he spoke hopefully about an immigration overhaul that a bipartisan group of senators outlined last week.

Since the November elections, many other Republicans nationwide have tempered their tone on immigration - if not reversed course completely - after years of tacking right to appeal to grass-roots activists who dominate GOP primaries.

On Tuesday, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor became the latest high-profile Republican to shift gears. A leader of the conservative caucus and previous opponent of the DREAM Act, Cantor called for allowing illegal immigrants brought here as children to become citizens.

Coffman won re-election by only 2 points and is a top target for Democrats next year. But Coffman says his change of heart is personal: He met a constituent who served as a Marine and lost his legs in an IED explosion in Afghanistan. The man was a Canadian immigrant who became a citizen, and his brother joined the military and became a citizen, too. Coffman also recalls a former Spanish tutor telling him about the lack of opportunity for young illegal immigrants.

"For young people who grew up in this country, and don't know another country, to not be able to serve in the military..." Coffman said, trailing off. He said the broader overhaul "seems to be moving in the right direction."

All this suggests that the Republican Party seems to have gotten the message after its shellacking last fall, though it is still unclear whether softer stances will translate into broad enough support for an overhaul that includes a pathway to citizenship for the country's estimated 11 million illegal immigrants.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney won only 27 percent support from Hispanics and even less from Asians. And an AP-GFK poll last month showed 62 percent of voters want to let otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants eventually become citizens, up 12 percentage points from 2010.

During the GOP presidential primaries, Romney wooed the party's right flank by echoing their rhetoric on immigration and advocating "self-deportation," or making life in the U.S. so miserable for illegal immigrants they would voluntarily return home. His campaign staff later said they regretted the sharp turn because it alienated minority voters.

Now Republicans are trying to get them back. "All of their campaign consultants are telling them that the end is near if they don't change," said Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, which advocates tighter immigration restrictions. He added that Republicans have long-favored a narrower version of the DREAM Act - formally, the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act - which would legalize the status of people brought here illegally as children who graduate from college or serve in the military.